STOL competitions

[Cguy]

One issue with that Yamaha setup I have yet to see addressed: that prop is clutched, and in a power out it will pinwheel freely, hugely increasing the sink rate. And that's another thing I want to do the next time I fly with Steve, go up to 1,000' (he'll win that) and then kill our motors, and the loser is the guy who lands first. We used to do it that way back in the ultralight days, it really illustrated who was flying on the wing, and who was flying on the motor. I don't expect a Yamaha powered anything to do any dead stick ridge soaring, like I do a few hours every year in my bird. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J9v433C0nM&t=19s The Bearhawk LSA would make an even better soaring machine as it's a fair bit cleaner then my S-7S.

We Rotax drivers have finally, mostly, got the legacy engines pilots to not refer to the Rotax 912S as a "snowmachine engine. " It never was of course, it started life as an aircraft engine, but as Rotax also made snowmachine motors the confusion was natural. Then this Apex comes along..... pretty funny. I'll give it time to build thousands of hours of fleet hours, the reduction system is the main thing they need to build some serious time on, the motor itself has a very long history of taking all kinds of abuse while putting out insane amounts of power and is apparently bulletproof. AS LONG as the reduc system, fuel delivery systems, and electrical are done right in these conversions. Henry is the guy to do it right. I am not personally aware of the number, or lack thereof, of engines outs he has, and unless you can quote chapter and verse on how many, and why, throwing that out on a public forum is a bit rude. My own last power out was 20 years ago, in a 0-320 Lyc., FWIW! With all the experimenting and tweaking he is constantly doing, I would expect he has a few, over heating, whatever, but that's how he learns how much he can tweak things! Pulling 120-40 hp out the Apex would be a whole different deal, instead of over 300.

Got ya schu, he for sure pushes the limits! His dead stick takeoff was just a stunt, not because of a motor issue, but i can see how many would think so! Landing on a LOT of steep stuff, and being an old hang glider pilot, as soon as I heard of it, it made perfect sense and was actually perfectly safe, no fear of power failure anyway. Here's a video of a high mountain takeoff and then dead stick I did a while back, I had a bit of a uphill bump to get over first or the motor could have been cut sooner.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkxFzQE2gEo